Saturday, May 24, 2008

Thoughts on Hillary Clinton's assassination remark

It is extremely difficult, not to say scary as hell, to attribute to any politician - no matter what the stakes - what seems on its face to be the import of Sen. Clinton's remark on Bobby Kennedy's assassination. So one wants to take her barely-there apology as the truth. On the other hand she may simply have lost it and be displaying more of what New York Gov. David Patterson called her desperation. I simply don't know. Mark Shields pointed out on the PBS News Hour that in addition to the inappropriateness of her assassination comment her history is flawed:
I mean, her history is absolutely faulty. Robert Kennedy's first primary,...was in May 7th of 1968. He was murdered four weeks later. She's talking about a long campaign.

This campaign began the first week in January. She's still talking about June. So, I mean, it's faulty there.
And others have pointed out that Bill Clinton may not have actually gone over the top until June, but he solidified the victory in March. The senator seems to say whatever she thinks works at any given moment.


Here are her original comments defending her staying in the race.


Here's Keith Olbermann's take on the controversy.


1 comment:

Andrew Gael said...

I agree that the technicalities of Bill Clinton and Bobby Kennedy's campaigns argue against Hillary's claim, Keith Olbermann's diatribe seemed overboard. He claimed one word, though tragic, is a word that implies she is waiting for someone to assassinate this black guy. That is blatantly not true, or at least I hope it is not. She seems to really only be attempting to invoke the only democratic party's campaigns that lasted until June. The fact that one of those is one of the most tragic moments in our nation's history is not something that can be held against Hillary. She could not have said assassination, but it is a fact that Bobby was assassinated. Words are words, Bobby Kennedy was on his way to being one our country's most inspiring leaders before he was assassinated or killed or his campaign "ended"...She was trying to make a point. A thin and wishful point, but a point using facts nonetheless. To say she is invoking tragedy...is taking it a bit too far...Olbermann invoked more tragedy by going on in his report than she did.